Titled “Legends,” the program is centered on Eriks Esenvalds' compelling The Legend of the Walled-In Woman, which relates an ancient Albanian legend from three perspectives. The choir will also perform works that symbolically tell the life story of the legend’s central character, in reverse. This includes Johannes Brahms' choral masterwork Nänie and Maurice Duruflé’s haunting Ubi Caritas. The program also features three works from the choir’s new recording The Heart’s Reflection: Music of Daniel Elder, which has been described as “first rate” and “highly recommended” by Classics Today. One Elder work, In Your Light, is a setting of a poem by Rumi, the 13th-century Persian mystic. A podcast that features Maestro Miller previewing the program is in the Westminster-to-Go series on iTunes and also at www.rider.edu/westminstertogo.

Setting the standard for choral excellence for 93 years, the Westminster Choir is composed of students at Westminster Choir College, a division of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts. It has been the chorus-in-residence for the prestigious Spoleto Festival USA since 1977, performing both in concert and as the opera chorus. Praised by The New York Times for its “full-bodied, incisive singing,” the Westminster Choir also forms the core of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, which has performed and recorded with the leading conductors and orchestras of our time. The ensemble’s 2013-2014 season includes a concert tour of Texas and Oklahoma, the release of a new recording, as well as performances and broadcasts in Princeton. Its annual residency at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., will include several concerts, performances as the opera chorus and the first fully staged production of John Adams’ oratorio El Nino.

Joe Miller is conductor of two of America’s most renowned choral ensembles – the Westminster Choir and the Westminster Symphonic Choir. He is also artistic director for choral activities at the Spoleto Festival USA. As conductor of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, Dr. Miller has collaborated with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, earning him critical praise. After a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection” with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst, The New York Times wrote, “Joe Miller's Westminster Symphonic Choir was subtle when asked and powerful when turned loose.”

Dr. Miller is also founder and conductor of the Westminster Chamber Choir, a program that offers professional-level choral and vocal artists the opportunity to explore challenging works for two weeks each summer on the Westminster campus in Princeton.